House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2025, with 53% of the vote.
Points of Order December 16th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, now that the fall economic statement has been tabled, I believe we would now proceed to questions to the minister.
Therefore, I would like to ask the government to stand in this place and tell us exactly how big the budget deficit was last year. How much did the government blow past the $40 billion? Is it a big deficit, or is it a super-duper deficit?
Points of Order December 16th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, as you would know, that was an order of the House that the minister is trying to unilaterally withdraw. I seek guidance from you and from the table on whether a minister of the Crown can withdraw a unilateral order of the House to prevent the government from making a statement. I am looking for your advice on whether the government, due to its own disorder and chaos, can now unilaterally withdraw an order of the House of such magnitude.
Questions on the Order Paper December 4th, 2024
With regard to ministers' and government entities' compliance with paragraphs 74(d) and 88(c) of the Access to Information Act: (a) has each minister or government entity subject to those provisions of the Act prepared or had access to "back pocket" briefing materials for parliamentary committee appearances; (b) if the answer to (a) is affirmative, what is the distinction between regular and "back pocket" briefing materials; and (c) are the "back pocket" briefing materials also disclosed proactively and, if not, why not?
Tax Break for All Canadians Act November 28th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order, I would say that it is offensive to clowns to be compared to the NDP.
Government Business No. 43—Proceedings on Bill C-78 November 28th, 2024
Mr. Speaker, we would request a recorded division.
Government Business No. 43—Proceedings on Bill C-78 November 28th, 2024
Madam Speaker, what is deeply undemocratic is a Liberal government that campaigned on not using it and then hypocritically uses it so often, allowing only hours of debate. In this case, we were allowed to debate for an hour and 15 minutes on a major tax policy measure; it will have almost no debate in the House, no debate in committee and no room for amendments.
Government Business No. 43—Proceedings on Bill C-78 November 28th, 2024
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou for her question. Much like in the ridings of many of my colleagues, people and families in my riding are turning to food banks. These folks are not going out to restaurants. They cannot afford it. This bill is not going to help families using food banks or those who cannot afford to spend any money on their families. This Prime Minister and this Liberal government have created an economy where everything is more expensive for Canadians. This bill will not help most Canadians.
Government Business No. 43—Proceedings on Bill C-78 November 28th, 2024
Madam Speaker, I am very proud to stand up on behalf of the people I serve, the great people of Perth—Wellington. What the people of Perth—Wellington and what people across the country are demanding is a carbon tax election. They want the ability to have a say on where the carbon tax goes. On this side, we will oppose the carbon tax. That is the comparison. On the Liberal side, they are offering a temporary, two-month tax trick on certain items. On this side, we are offering the permanent cancellation of the carbon tax for all Canadians across the board.
We are also saying that we should take the GST off new home construction under $1 million so that we can see the spurring of up to 30,000 new homes being built each and every year. The people I talk to who are having trouble and challenges finding a place to live that is in their price range will benefit from that, and it will spur growth in our communities, be helpful for the economy and ensure that the cost of living goes down for Canadians.
Government Business No. 43—Proceedings on Bill C-78 November 28th, 2024
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hard-working, common-sense Conservative member for Fundy Royal.
It is always an honour to rise to address the House, but unfortunately I do so this evening without optimism and without enthusiasm. Instead, I am forced to rise with disappointment and frustration given the state of the House of Commons.
In the past 24 hours, we have seen the tired, weak and desperate Liberals use closure and programming motions to avoid accountability for their scandals and to attempt to distract Canadians with their temporary, two-month tax trick. What is interesting about Motion No. 43 is that it is a guillotine motion that has itself been guillotined by a guillotine motion. This is a motion that would introduce closure on a motion that is about closure and stopping debate.
Here we are this evening debating Motion No. 43. I want to say that Bill C-78 was written on the back of a cocktail napkin, but it seems more appropriately to say the bill was written on an Etch A Sketch. The Liberals have taken it, shaken it and changed it a few times to try to get the NDP on board, and no one knows exactly what the next shake will do.
The Leader of the Government in the House of Commons has shut down debate on not one but two matters of privilege today so that the Liberals can force through their temporary, short-sighted tax trick legislation. The problem is that the Liberals are afraid of the Canadian people. They know that their parliamentary calendar is slipping away and that the days they have left to bring legislation before the House of Commons are limited. They know that a strong, common-sense Conservative government is on the horizon. When our common-sense Conservative Party takes power after a carbon tax election, we will be able to deliver for the hard-working Canadians we have the honour of representing.
We know the Liberal government has allowed its entire legislative agenda to be paralyzed. Why is the House paralyzed from considering all other pieces of legislation? It is because the Liberals violated an order of the House of Commons from June 10 wherein they were required to table documents with the clerk so they could be turned over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This begs the question: What is so damning in those documents that the Liberals would shut down Parliament for two months to prevent the Mounties from getting them?
What does this programming motion today actually do? It shuts down debate on Bill C-78. In the House, there are 338 seats, yet all but five of the hon. members who sit in those seats will be prevented from debating this piece of legislation. Billions of dollars of spending will not be debated in the House because of this programming motion.
Even more egregious is that the Liberal programming motion means the temporary tax trick bill would skip the committee process altogether. This means it would not go to the finance committee so we could hear from experts. It would not go to the finance committee so we could hear from the Canadians who will be affected by the bill. It would not go to the finance committee so we could hear from the small businesses and small business workers who would be affected. There would not be an opportunity to make amendments to this piece of legislation.
No sensible legislative body ought to agree to this process outside of an emergency situation. Let us be clear: Plummeting Liberal poll numbers may seem like an emergency to the Liberal government, but it is not an emergency for the Canadian people, who we have the great honour of representing.
If we read this programming motion, this guillotine motion, it has the wording “deemed requested, “deemed referred”, “deemed considered”, “deemed reported”, “deemed concurred in” and “deemed read a third time and passed”. It is as lazy as it is reckless. This programming motion is not democratic. In fact, it is an affront to transparency and Canadian democracy.
Why is the Liberal government doing this? Why would the Liberals bring forward this temporary tax trick at this time? It is because it is a distraction from the other scandals that they are involved in. There is the ArriveCAN scandal, in which two guys in a basement were paid millions of dollars for no actual IT work. There is the $400-million Liberal green slush fund, which is currently under consideration in the House as a matter of privilege. There is the ever-evolving scandal around the disgraced former minister of employment, the member for Edmonton Centre, who falsely claimed indigenous status in order to gain contracts from the Liberal government; this has also led to its own question of privilege. The misconduct and ethical lapses of the Liberal government are outright disgraceful. Finally, last week, after weeks of opposition members' demanding action, the member for Edmonton Centre stepped down from the Liberal cabinet. However, I can assure members that the good people of Edmonton Centre are watching. I know that, after the next election, they will remove him as the member of Parliament for that riding so that a common-sense Conservative member can represent those fine people.
What happened right after the member quit being in cabinet? The Prime Minister and the finance minister obviously took to Google and typed in “ways to distract Canadians”. They came up with this new temporary tax trick. The Prime Minister may have been googling it at the Taylor Swift concert as he kept changing different ways of doing that. However, Canadians do not just see this as bad vibes, as might be noted, but as a real challenge for going forward and for their livelihoods.
As I know many colleagues on this side of the House do, I talk regularly with local constituents and local small business owners. These small business owners may have one, two, three or four employees. They put in long hours, late into the night, and they are up early in the morning before the sun rises in order to build a business for themselves, for their families and for their communities. While I have been speaking with local businesses over the last few days, they have told me of their real concerns about the impact this temporary tax trick will have on their businesses, on their point of sale and their computer systems. They will have to shoulder the costs of updating those systems for December 14 and then again on February 15, which is Flag Day in Canada, and they are going to have to bear those costs. They are also concerned about the potential for audits down the way for incorrectly applying these new rules, albeit through no fault of their own. What is more, because this falls over the new year, it is two fiscal years for most businesses, and so they would have the double challenge of being audited twice for the challenges of this program.
I have received a number of emails, and I will read one from a small business owner, who wrote that the “Federal government DOES NOTHING but expects us to eat the cost of trying to Make the Federal government look good” and “we then must do more work to turn all of this off in February”. He concluded, “[S]orry if I'm not very supportive of this very badly thought-out policy.” That is from a small business owner who is expressing the concerns that so many of us have heard about how this program was brought about.
Let us talk again about the temporary nature of this program. It goes until February 15. What happens about six weeks after that? First, the escalator tax on wine, beer and spirits goes up automatically. Even worse, on the Liberals' way to quadrupling the carbon tax on April 1, we will once again see the carbon tax rise on the way to costing 61¢ per litre. This is simply unacceptable.
This policy is poorly thought out. We should not have been at this point in Parliament, with the Liberals so desperate to implement a temporary tax trick to try to distract Canadians from their poor record as a government. The Liberals have made the House unworkable. This is not the policy that we should be going forward with. We should be having a carbon tax election so that Canadians can make the decision that they want to see a strong, common-sense Conservative government after the next election.
Government Business No. 43—Proceedings on Bill C-78 November 28th, 2024
Madam Speaker, I know the member for Simcoe North speaks a lot with the constituents in his riding. I want him to comment on whether his constituents agree that our tax system is far too complicated, and whether it might be smarter to have a simpler, fairer, lower tax system for Canadians.